


a sea change

by PikaCheeka



Series: a sea change [1]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alcohol, Child Abuse, Drugs, F/M, Incest, Lots of Sex, M/M, Multi, Mystery, Rape, Torture, Violence, Yakuza, everything else that comes with ViTri, light crime noir, original characters used to shed light on canon character relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 09:50:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9884462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: Trip's repressed interest in Virus begins to surface when he hooks up with a woman he is convinced is Virus' mother. Suddenly nothing is as it once was, not even himself.A ViTri fic written for Virus' birthday!





	

**Author's Note:**

> This piece, written for Virus' birthday 2017, is a LONG fic, my longest fanfic ever, and ironically, it's a sort of fic I never dreamed I would write! This contains an original female character, but she remains nameless and relatively anonymous in what is ultimately a Trip x Virus story. Similar to the anonymous "mentor-san" in "Thursday Night", I am using an original character to facilitate and portray the oddities of their relationship. I hope she is as well-received as he was! This story is a bit of a mystery, as you will discover once you get into it, and the reader is meant to draw some connections and conclusions on their own (I threw in a lot of little Easter eggs). I had a lot of fun writing this, so I hope all enjoy reading it! 
> 
> This fanfic discusses and/or portrays rape, incest, drug use, alcoholism, torture, violence (and violence against women), murder, prostitution, child abuse, child rape, sex both gay and heterosexual, language, sexism, etc... Please pass this fic by if you can't handle any of that.

\-- 1

It begins when he sees the movement out of the corner of his eyes, a careless and practiced swagger from the figure across the street, and something in the air changes; he freezes in his steps. He thought he was at home for the barest of moments, but when he focuses his vision he sees her, bleach blonde and tall if only in those heels.

He shakes his head and sighs. If only Virus knew he'd just mistaken a woman for him. But as he starts to turn away she moves again, a flick of her wrist as she rearranges her purse and leans in to look more closely in the store window, and Trip feels a familiar twisting in his gut, a settling of the air around him. She's not Virus, but she's _something_. And so he slips back into the shadows of the alley and watches her, watches her waver at the pricetags, lean into the doorway of the shop to see how invasive the shopkeepers might be if someone who doesn’t want to buy anything walks in and duck out again just as quickly, shrug and stride off. He doesn't catch her face beyond a reflection, but it's enough.

He follows her home. It's an easy decision, an act he does more regularly than he is even aware of. Several minutes pass before it even crosses his mind what he's doing, before he remembers the first time Virus caught him following him through the streets of Midorijima. He'd seemed pleased, if anything, clapping his hands around his face and calling him his little stalker, his breath hot and his fingers cold and something in his voice that made Trip want to take him then and there. It was the first of exactly three times Virus had caught him at it over the course of their lives after the institution, and if not even Virus could catch him at it most of the time, he supposes he is good enough at it. He'd stalked a good number of the members of Morphine before kidnapping them, after all.

She doesn't notice. Not even when he's over six feet tall and blonde. _It's strange, isn't it, what people do and don't notice,_ but there's no point in dwelling on it. He even lets himself smoke, more than once carelessly shoving someone out of the way, not even attempting to be subtle, daring her to turn around, to feel that creeping horror on the back of her neck as she realizes something is wrong, but she does nothing. He knows then that she's a foreigner, another European or American woman raised to believe Japan was the safest country in the world, blissfully unaware that Midorijima was its cesspit. Convenient, if nothing else, when it came to making people disappear.

He knows his assessment was correct when she stops at a hotel. A mediocre business hotel, 24 rooms, only one entrance and a fire escape so difficult to maneuver he always figured everyone would die if there were ever an incident. There aren’t many options outside of Platinum Jail for visitors, because who in their right mind would go there?

He bites his lip and considers. There's a traffic light right in front, a CCTV feed facing in several directions above it. It doesn't take him long to decide, to pull out a burner phone and enter stolen credentials for police access. He knows enough of the intersection numbers by now to figure out which one he wants quickly. Narrowing his eyes, he studies the images. It's not perfect, but they show enough of the hotel, the walk in front, for him to know when she leaves. And he sighs again as he slips the phone back into his pocket. He can check it tomorrow, go through the feed, find out when she leaves in the morning and if she has a bag with her, if she's staying another night. There's nothing going on in his life tomorrow, and Trip's already crossing off places she might go. If she's staying at a hotel like this, her options for food and shopping on the island are limited, especially if she's a foreigner. There are only so many affordable tourist traps. Maybe she'll surprise him, but he's done this enough by now to know how rarely that happens. As much as he’s attracted to them, all middle-aged women tend to be similar enough.

He could just harass them at the front desk. He knows what to say, what to do, to get hotel workers to say too much, how long a guest is staying, what room a guest is staying in, if they're with someone else... but something about her makes him uneasy, as if the ground beneath his feet is no longer as steady as it had been only an hour earlier. He doesn't yet know how much he wants to know.

 

\--- 2

Virus answers the door, towel draped over his head, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and exercise pants. He still smells like the shower and his skin is damp, soft, warm, _pliant_. Trip's fingers twitch momentarily at the thought and he almost doesn't hear the question directed at him.

"You get toothpaste?"

"Nope. Forgot."

"What'd you even do then? You were gone an hour," but he smiles as he says it, raises his arms to rub his hair dry. "It's okay. I have a few travel size tubes. I always take them when I stay at hotels..."

He goes on for another minute or two but Trip is no longer listening. He's only interested in how much Virus' shirt rides up, how low his pants sit on his hips, how much of that pliant skin he’s showing him, and he has to clear his throat before replying, "I'll get it tomorrow."

"Mm hmm," Virus throws the towel at him and turns on his heel before sauntering into the kitchen. He throws his hip as he does it, moves his ass far more than necessary, and there's something eerily familiar in the action.

He waits until Virus is out of sight in the kitchen before fingering his phone in his pocket.

He finds himself checking the CCTV feed first thing in the morning, which is before six for him even on a day off, one of those subtle differences between them. He'd expected himself to forget, to not care about her any longer when he woke up, but that flick of a wrist kept him staring at the ceiling far longer than he is used to. He can't just forget her. There's _something_. The private airport that he has access to is clearly out of the question for her, because last night he’d casually shot Takahashi a threatening email to check some paperwork for him and confirm that Toue Inc. has not allowed any single women of that age access to the island in recent weeks. Only the higher-ups go unrecorded, and if she was a higher-up of Toue’s, she wouldn’t be staying in the Old District unless she is utterly crazy. So that leaves the ferry. There are only two a day to the mainland from Midorijima, usually reserved for mail and supplies, occasionally allowing passengers who need to visit for work or family, and he has the schedule memorized. If she's leaving today, she has limited options. Seven in the morning or four in the afternoon. If she wanted to make the first one, she’d have left by now, and as he scans the backlog lazily for any hint of her, he knows that he has at least ten hours to find her again.

Virus is a chronically late riser, and as they have nothing to do today, Trip merely scribbles a note and sticks it on the fridge. He rolls his eyes when he finds the older man’s towel from the night before draped over the couch, and when he traipses down the hall to throw it in the laundry he listens at Virus’ bedroom door a moment. He knows Virus is asleep, sprawled out in the bed with his hands grasping at nothing. He sleeps with his lips slightly parted, his eyebrows raised and his fingers spread. He doesn’t sleep well, never had even as a child…. And something about Virus as a child turns a knot in his stomach and Trip exhales again. He feels he is walking on a precipice or on ice far too thin, as if there is a door between them that was never meant to even be acknowledged, a door that he desires to not only unearth but open.

The last thing he recalls before leaving the apartment is the way Virus had twisted his hip the night before, an action mirrored against a time only several hours earlier.

 

\-- 3

He doesn't let himself think too deeply on it before approaching her, sliding into the seat beside her at the bar. It had been remarkably easy to find her, especially with the barrel of a gun pressed against the hotel clerk’s ribcage; there were less aggressive ways of getting information, but something about her already had him unhinged, desperate to act in order to find her. The woman had, after all, asked which bars in the area were friendly to foreigners and safe for women, an irony not lost on Trip as the girl at the desk stuttered out the one she’d suggested. He had wondered for the briefest moments if she’d lie, if her desire to protect another woman outweighed her self-preservation, but this was Midorijima, not Kyoto, and in the end he’d believed her, had calmly slid the gun back beneath his coat and tipped her a few thousand yen for good measure.

She’d been honest, and here they sit. She’s smaller than he’d initially realized, up close, easily half his weight and significantly shorter, but she doesn’t shy away from him and continues to drink with a ease and confidence that piques his interest still further. There's no need to say anything. He'd learned long ago that his mere presence, his appearance, was usually enough to make women say something to him first. He didn't like women he had to make an effort for, and if they weren't going to speak up, he supposed they weren't worth it. She doesn’t make him wait long.

"Don't see many other blue-eyed foreigners around here.”

He smiles with half of his mouth, looks down at his glass, a delicate balance of feigned disinterest and shyness; it almost always works, as older women can’t seem to get enough of young men who walk the line between dangerous and bashful. But this time it isn't entirely an act, because there's a certain lilt in her voice that makes him nervous. He remembers Virus huskily whispering to him last night after they’d eaten dinner and knocked off a few beers, and wonders if he _knows_. He picks his words with care only after taking a sip. "They ain’t even contacts. Your Japanese is pretty good."

"I used to live here when I was young," she turns her head to face him, a lazy smile appearing, and Trip slides fully into his flirtation mode.

"You think I'm gonna say you look young, I'm not." He allows himself to grin then, wolfish teeth showing as he slides a cigarette out of his front pocket.

She laughs at that before leaning towards him and flicking her hand out. "Give me a light for that one."

Trip's grin is genuine then. _Easy_. He'd guessed right about her, and the pale inside of her wrist is oddly familiar, alluring. He obeys and says nothing until both are lit. It's a companionable silence of a sort only found in lonely bars. "You here on business?"

"I might be."

"Job interview or playin' hard to get?"

She swivels in her chair, as if she were twenty and not the nearly-fifty that Trip suspects she is. Her knees are dangerously close to his thigh. She has a nice body, though for once it's a woman's voice that catches his attention and not her figure. "I'm a journalist."

Trip snorts, "And I'm a Yakuza."

"Liar," there's a coldness in the way she says it that piques Trip's interest still further. _Rough around the edges._ This is someone who has seen a lot, who _can take a lot_.

"Probably. Whatchu writing about?"

"Yakuza."

"Liar."

"Mm, you're a clever one," but she says it gently, in a tone that makes the air around them shift, and Trip finds himself inhaling sharply. He isn't aware he's doing it until she leans into him. She’s prettier than he’d realized at first glance, sharp cheekbones and thin eyebrows and a gentle slope to her upper lip that most women he knows would pay seven figures for. Younger than he’d initially thought to, maybe forty-five, but before he can even begin to doubt himself, he realizes her eyes are a pale blue and her hair isn't bleached after all. _Natural blonde_. The unexpectedness makes him lean back as she speaks again, "But you learn from the best, hm?"

The stupidity of the comment throws him off even more so than her closeness to his face, and he catches himself staring, one eyebrow raised in confusion and his cigarette half-forgotten. "Did you just praise yourself?"

"I guess so," she laughs. Trip is used to fake laughs, nervous ones, flirtatious giggles, and this is none of them. He's used to women fawning over him, but in such a way that indicates subservience, reverence, _fear_ , glances sizing up his biceps, the tattoos faintly visible when he wears white, the wad of cash he pulls out to pay the tab. He's used to women being attracted to him, talking to him, sleeping with him, exactly because they are attracted to danger. This is something different. 

"You're one weird lady," he rolls his eyes as he says it but he's unhinged.

"But you sat next to me," and as she speaks she does it again, a certain twitch of her lips, her right eyebrow, that twists something inside of him.

"Got anywhere to be tonight?" He looks away as he asks, as if to hide something, a pointed move that he knows works far more often than not. He’d like to think he’s better than them, that he isn’t stupid enough to fall for a mystery, but he’s aware he is no different in that regard. He’s hooked already.

"No," she uses English for no clear reason, and he’s unsure if she’s trying to impress him or she merely slipped, saw another white person and took the chance to act like she does back home.

"Then keep me company."

"You don't have anyone at home waiting for you?" She says it suspiciously, as if she can't believe he's single.

"Naw. Sometimes my room-mate and I have dinner but not tonight." He waves the bartender over before turning to face her again. "What do you like if you don’t hafta pay the tab?"

When he puts his hand on the small of her back nearly an hour later, she smiles knowingly as she leans into him.

He’s on her the moment she closes the door to her hotel room, pressing her to the wall as he kneads her breasts, slides a leg between her own, and kisses her hard. She responds eagerly, pulling his hair, lingering over his earrings a moment before unzipping his coat and grabbing for his tie. They are both desperate, and Trip is keenly aware that he is not as drunk as he should be to behave like this. But she is small and lithe and her tongue is wicked and her eyes bright and her demeanor is too familiar, uncannily so, and that is enough for him to let his barriers fall one by one as he runs a hand up her inner thigh and beneath her dress. She wears no tights, and when he rubs her through the thin fabric of her panties, his fingers come away damp. “Already, eh?”

“You’re one to talk,” she grins against his mouth and abruptly grabs his crotch, applying enough force to make him hiss and growl in what he can’t quite call pain when he’s more aroused than he’s been in weeks. And so he steps back a pace, gives her room to remove his tie and unbutton his shirt as he digs the zipper out of the side of her dress. Womens’ clothing is too complicated, as far as he’s concerned.

When she has him stripped from the waist up, she freezes for a moment, eyes roving as she circles him slowly. “Oh…you really are, huh…” she says it softly, traces her fingers down his back, over the massive tiger crawling down his back, the clouds and lightening surrounding it, up over his shoulders before coming to a neat halt around his deltoids.

“That a problem?” But he knows it won’t be. It never is. Unlike Virus, whose matching tattoo is that of a dragon, he has a habit of showing it off to his sex partners, even if they only unbutton his shirt to catch a glimpse of it, and never once had a woman backed away from him. He attracts a certain type, after all, and he can’t help but grin when she slips around to his front and pulls him down for a kiss.

“No. I like it rough anyway,” she whispers when they break apart for air; it is the last coherent statement she makes for some time, because Trip grins in response and grabs her by the hips and rolls her onto the bed as she laughs.  He rubs her as he kisses her again, bites his way down her throat, sucks on her breasts and settles between her thighs.

As he thrusts into her he thinks of Virus, Virus, _Virus_ , his crooked eyetooth that only shows when he grins just right, his thin tapered fingers, his thick blonde hair that never does what he wants it to no matter how much effort he puts into it, his narrow hips and tight belly and muscular thighs. She hisses in his ear, urging him on as she pulls his hair and wraps her legs around his hips, and even in the nonsense she whispers he finds something akin to _him_. Fucking older women, blonde women, mixed race women, is nothing new for him, but there is something about her that lets him forget who she is, what she is, lets him forget everything but _Virus_ , and as he climaxes he understands what it was that drew him to her, what made him confuse her wet heat with his in such a way that had never happened before.

Her tenacity and endurance surprise him, because even after the second time, while he is struggling to catch his breath, she casually fluffs her pillow and leans back, beckoning to him. “How old did you say you were?”

“Mm, twenty-four,” he mutters as he reaches for her.

“Why do you like older women so much?” She asks as he presses her face into her chest. He’s fairly certain she either works out or has had subtle help regarding plastics because her breasts are remarkably solid for her age.

“Moms got better tits, usually. And better in bed. And they don’t wanna commit, just fuck some young dude to piss off their husband sometimes,” he mumbles into her.

“Mmm. What makes you think I’m a mom?”

“You got stretch marks and you keep patting my head like I’m a fucking dog. Only moms do that.” He knows this not because of his own youth, but because he’s slept with enough mothers by now.

“You got me. Never had a husband to piss off but I was a mother. Maybe you have a mom fetish, yea? That’s a little gross.” she grins, pats his head again before sitting up and reaching for her bra. “I used to play with his hair a lot…He had such soft hair. He’s gone now though.”

Gone. Not dead but _gone_. It’s those words that do it, because it means that unsettling thought that entered his mind during sex may not be as far-fetched as he’d tried to tell himself afterwards. He doesn't normally go for second dates, but as he watches her get dressed, he catches himself asking, "Want to do this again sometime?"

 

\--- 4

He wakes up at 6:17 am, later than he has slept in months, and remembers nothing. His throat is raw and his head is on fire, like he drank far too much last night – he knows he did – and his body is worn and exhausted, like he had a lot of sex last night – he knows he did that, too. But that’s the extent of his recollection, and when he sits up and sees who is in bed with him, he considers rolling over and retching for the briefest of moments. _Virus_. He may harbor fantasies of fucking him, may have been doing so for ten years, but this is not how he wanted it to have gone, not when he can’t remember anything afterwards. No. It was _her_. Blonde hair and glasses, but a petite body with tits and muscular thighs and nothing between her legs but a soft wet heat. Not Virus. _But so much like him, as close as he’ll ever get, so close he asked her for a second night, and a third, because.._. There’s no point in allowing that thought to go further, and once he is sure he can stand without keeling over, he slides out of bed and hastens to the bathroom. The older man had even used his shower last night, left his glasses on the sink, but he can’t let himself consider how Virus was in this room naked only a few hours before. He feels filthy, raw. She’d wiped him out last night, their third night together, gotten him so plastered he was apparently blackout drunk. It’d been a long time since that had happened. He wants nothing more than to check his phone and crawl back into bed, gently touch Virus and see how far he can take it while he still sleeps, but he forces himself to go on with his morning routine, stumble into clothing, go for a run, lift weights and take a cold shower and start the coffee and be fully dressed and alert before Virus even knows what day it is. _She’s no morning person either_.

He doesn’t know how he gets through it, but when his room-mate finally staggers into the kitchen and opens and closes the fridge several times in confusion, he manages to push him in the general direction of a chair and shoves a mug into his hands. Long tapered fingers so expensively manicured. There’s something wicked about Virus in the mornings, a veneer of innocence plastered over a softened viciousness, deceptively solid ice over a depthless and violent sea that cracks the moment Trip meets his eyes and those thin lips open.

“You smelled really good last night.”

Trip almost drops his coffee and is unable to make his mouth work, but Virus chatters on.

“You went to bed without even showering, yea? You smelled like a woman. I couldn’t stop huffing you. I don’t know if it was her perfume or her sex or what but I wanted to suck your tits.” He laughs abruptly and bites it off just as quickly. “If you see her again, take pics for me.”

There’s too much for Trip to process – Virus smelling him last night, being aroused by it, wanting pictures of _her_ – and he has to close his eyes a moment. Only to envision Virus pressed up against him, humping him, pressing his face to his pecs and inhaling. Sharing a bed is hardly unusual for them despite having separate rooms, and for a moment he wonders if this is regular behavior once he’s asleep. “Dunno if I’ll see her again.”

“You didn’t even wipe yourself off, did you…?”

_Far too much_. “How do you know that.” It isn’t a question.

“How do you think?” he replies pleasantly enough, but the leer on his face indicates that for all his honesty, this isn’t something he’s going to readily admit.

Trip can only stare at those fingers he now knows groped him last night as he feels himself drowning.

 

\--- 5 

She’d replied to his text for dinner immediately, as he knew she would, and when he arrives she is sitting at the desk in her tiny business hotel room and laboriously administering some form of mask. The smell of cucumber and chemicals makes Trip wrinkle his nose and sigh. Too familiar, too unsettling. “My room-mate does those, too.”

“You said that when I mentioned my exercise videos last time, and when I did my nails, too. She must have great nails. Your room-mate is pretty snazzy.”

He’s fairly certain that isn’t a word anyone in Japan has used in the last fifty years but it’s just another tic, another reminder that something here is off, that apparently, making stupid comments just might be genetic. “Ya well his face routine takes like twenty minutes a day.”

“His?” She hesitates. “Is your room-mate a man or a suburban housewife?”

_If only he knew._ But he grins, canines showing as he imagines Virus’ reaction to this. Disbelief and an awkward laugh as he continued painting his nails. And with his grin comes a peculiar sense of relief. She knows now. Things can progress. He can learn more without sounding too forward. “He’s very much a dude.”

“All this time I thought you were shacking up with another older woman… “

“You thought I had a lady all this time and didn’t say anything?”

“That’d be your problem, not mine. You got pictures of him?” There is an interest in her voice that wipes out any relief Trip had just felt. _Desperation_ , and yet again he recalls the feeling he’d had when he’d first had sex with her.

“Not for you.” But an idea is forming in his mind as he watches her shrug and go back to her routine.

Virus had complimented him more than once on how calculating he can be, on how beneficial it is to have a work partner who everyone thinks is the dimwitted muscle when in reality he’s so cruelly manipulative, and when Virus had said that with his tongue curling around his teeth in delight Trip felt an arousal that carried him through nearly a month. He’d turned Virus on, if only by accident. It had been enough for a time. And while the woman continues to fix her mask and curl her eyelashes, he changes the password on his phone to something stupid - the date they first talked – and announces he’s running down to the lobby for smokes.

He lingers at the vending machine, aimlessly arranging and re-arranging his coins until he gets an alert on his coil that there’d been a login on his phone, a program he rarely bothered using given the amount of burners he had, but it had its uses. He grins and runs his tongue slowly over his teeth and waits again, another minute. And another. It shouldn’t be hard for her to find the subject of most of his photos and over eighty percent of his texts.

When he finally returns to the room, he makes far more noise than necessary in the hall, at the door, and when he waltzes in and throws the two packages of smokes on the bed, he pretends not to notice how his phone is a centimeter or two away from where he left it.

She gives herself away immediately. “Is he really just your room-mate? Nothing…more?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want to though? Have sex with him?”

The answer is an immediate flat “No.” But the more he sits there, the more he feels her eyes burning into him as he lights another cigarette and pointedly avoids her gaze, he knows this is one of the few lies she can actually see through, though he feels there is more to her question than mere jealousy. He wonders just what pictures she’d seen on his phone, which photos gave his interest away, how obvious it is to every outsider who passes them on the street and works with them and knows how they interact, wonders if outsiders see a reciprocation or a one-sided fixation. “Maybe.”

She smiles faintly. “You talked about your _room-mate_ so much already, for someone who doesn’t say much. I figured he had to be a girl…”

“Can you stop that?”

“Hm,” is all she says, and she proceeds to peel her face mask off.

 

\--- 6

"What's she like?"

"Huh?"

"You're going steady with someone, right?" There's something peculiar in his tone and Trip feels himself tensing in anticipation before replying.

"Naw, we just fuck." It's not a legitimate answer and they both know it. Trip has slept with plenty of women, had plenty of casual lays over the years, even ones he hooked up with regularly, but there's never been a woman in his life who had captured as much of his attention as this one.

"She's that good? Have her over sometime. I want to meet her." _Fuck her_ , he means. They both have a habit of dating women who like threesomes, had even gone through a period where they’d walk away from women if they found out it wouldn’t be an easy option, just another part of their life they share.

He finds himself snapping at him before he can stop himself. "No."

Virus keeps smiling, but something shifts in his demeanor, a subtle alteration of posture, of eyebrows, and Trip knows he has somehow hurt him. It isn’t an expression he is used to. "Interesting."

He runs his hands down his face and groans softly. He can't tell him, can't admit that the reason he doesn't want him meeting her is the same reason he's infatuated with her - that she might be Virus' mother, that when he has sex with her he can pretend she is him, that he might be able to learn things about his room-mate the longer he spends with her and for all his feigned disinterest in their past, he desperately longs to know everything about him. Even he can recognize the depravity, and he doesn't care to have Virus know just how much he thinks about him, how far he will go for his fantasies. He wasn't expecting this, but even as he's struggling for something to say, Virus continues.

"Is she embarrassing? I won't judge. Unless she's fat."

_A way out of this mess_ , though still a touchier subject than he cares to admit. It’s a fundamental aspect of their lives that they usually disagree on, the acceptability of softness in the women they date. He likes bigger tits, wider hips, a certain amount of _give_ , of padding, because he likes sex rough and he personally finds a lot of the women Virus likes too delicate. The older man had once commented that Trip had a mother fetish, that he liked the ones whose bodies were built for children, that he was trying to fill some kind of absence in his life for the sake of his vasectomy, a comment that has taken on new weight in recent weeks. "Not fat, just embarrassing."

"How?" 

He hopes that in this situation, the truth won't be taken seriously. "She's like you but she's got tits."

"That's not embarrassing."

Whether he understood the insult and chose to ignore it, or was genuinely unaware, is beyond Trip. "Ya it is. She's so chatty and says dumb shit all the time. Like we're fucking and she just asks if I like eggplants and don't they feel like dicks a little, and o yea did I ever get a hardon while driving a car uphill."

"Oh." He frowns then, and something in his face relaxes. "Do I say things like that?"

"Uhm." _She never even said that; you said it last time you were drunk_. "Sometimes."

"Is that all though?"

"It's bad." He's learned over the years that when he gives evasive answers, Virus doesn't usually pick up on it, or if he does, he pretends not to. "If you meet her you'll both just talk so much. Like when you put two phones next to each other. Get higher and higher and stupider, too."

Virus laughs softly, runs his hand through his damp hair. His part is a mess, as if he hadn't even tried to comb it. "I guess I was...."

They let it hang between them, until Virus suddenly sniffs and rubs his nose, and Trip understands then why he'd asked, why he'd seemed so emotional, paranoid. _Jealous._ He doesn't recall ever missing the signs before, and he wonders absently how it came to this. _Maybe you only want him jealous because of what it means._

"Do you have any more?"

"Mm yea. Want some? Tripping with-"

_How does he not realize?_ But Trip only holds his index finger to his lips and Virus obeys.

 

\--- 7

He finds himself at the hotel for the fifth night in ten days before he decides to change tactics. Watching the smoke spiral towards the ceiling, he wonders absently if it would be worth getting her a better room somewhere, in a real hotel. She can only live so long in a matchbox and he doesn’t want her going anywhere. Not yet. He doesn’t even know what she’s doing on the island yet. “Can’t stay tonight. Got an interview with _Shinpo_ tomorrow.”

“What’s that?”

He chooses his words slowly, studying her face as he enunciates each word. "It's a Yakuza magazine. You said you were a journalist."

"I lied," she says it with a lazy smile. "My parents were journalists."

"Died during work, eh? Said you were an orphan earlier."

"Yea, in the West Bank. You don't know about that place, do you? Can't try to trick me again."

"Bitch," he exhales softly, but it’s what he expected. The story was too perfect, too canned. He supposes honesty isn’t always genetic, and after all Virus’ brutal honesty is an anomaly in the human race. It’s never come easy for himself. "All I know is they got good guns next door. Why are you really here? Nobody comes here."

"I said earlier. I was here a while ago, and I wanted to see it again. My grandmother was Japanese. Grandparents raised me when my parents died, so when I was a teenager I got the idea in my head to come to Japan. I knew the language. They got me set up at a school in Tokyo, but I had a kid."

Trip snorts. "They happen." But they don't, not for him.

She ignores the comment. "I raised him alone in the city for a while, but my Visa ran out. Everyone back home was dead by then, and I didn't want to go back to England. Host clubs are easy work and they don't have those back home, but I couldn’t work in the city anymore."

"Midorijima is under vague jurisdiction with Japanese citizenship."

She smiles again. "It's like the British Virgin Islands. Well, maybe not. But once you get here, nobody cares what your passport says. I figured I could still raise him in Japan... I didn’t expect him to get sick. And the only hospital on the island here, it’s no good. I couldn’t get the citizens’ insurance because of my status, couldn’t afford his treatment, and couldn’t leave."

He could ask what happened to the kid, but he doesn’t. “You left eventually.”

“Yea, after…that happened. I couldn’t stay. I sunk into real prostitution and booked it as soon as I could.”

“And now you’re back here as a _journalist_.” He still doesn’t ask what happened. The boy was _gone_ , not dead, and he isn’t ready for that lie. If it is a lie, because he’s already fairly certain what happened to that boy.

 “Hey where are you from, huh? You always ask me stuff but you’re just as foreign here as I am…”

He chooses his next words carefully, weighing each one before lining them up in front of her. He doesn’t take his eyes off his Coil, doesn’t stop staring at his most recent text from Virus, an indecipherable mash of syllables and emojis. “Orphan, don’t remember parents at all so’s I got raised at this place. You ever hear about the human experimentation that happens here?”

“At Toue’s institute? I know Russia’s pissed, thinks he’s breeding supersoldiers here for the army that Japan isn’t supposed to have,” she says evenly, but she studies her nails now, and Trip can detect a tremor in her voice.

“And what about you huh, Miss Journalist? What do you think?”

It’s an immediate answer that she gives, prepackaged and full of a vehemence that he isn’t anticipating. “Medical testing for rare diseases.”

Trip exhales in a soft whistle as he sits upright, stares at her incredulously. But if she had been avoiding eye contact a moment ago, now she meets his gaze, and there is a rage and a depth to her eyes that he is not ready to exploit so soon. _Is that what you tell yourself, so you can sleep at night?_ “Then I’m a rare disease.”

She laughs then, with a cruelty that is at once alarming and arousing, as she lays a hand on his chest and pushes him back down onto the bed. Her nails dig into his shoulders as she strokes his tattoos. “Wear a condom then.”

 

\--- 8

"We haven't had a threesome in a while." Virus speaks softly as he picks up the spent shell, studies it for a moment before tossing it over his shoulder.

“Uhm…” The comment is so unexpected that Trip can do nothing but stare at the man still hogtied on the floor in front of them.

“Not him, he’s too fat,” he waves absently at him.

“Then why you bringing this up now?”

“Oh, he’s past hearing. It’s fine.”

Trip grins at that, snorts once in a genuine laugh and leans back against the dining room table behind them. He studies Virus’ hips, traces the now-hidden birthmark over his left one in his mind, and wonders absently if the man they’d just tortured had found him attractive before he’d injected him with ketamine and shot half his foot off because he wouldn’t talk fast enough. At least he’d had the sense to use a silencer in a condo, not that the neighbors wouldn’t pretend they heard nothing as they were wont to do in this neighborhood. “Go on.”

"Remember the last one... before you met this new woman?" The unspoken accusation hangs in the air. _The one you won't introduce me to. The one I want to fuck._

He remembers. All too well. They were both vaccinated against nearly every sexually transmitted disease over the years, an advantage of being medical test subjects and having decent medical care, and had both had vasectomies. There was no real reason for them to worry about protection, but they still always used them. Almost always. She'd asked them not to, and they’d been bored and curious enough to do as she asked. She’d been a pretty one, an adventurous half Korean girl Virus had run into at a club and coaxed to a hotel room with pictures of Trip he’d had on his phone, a girl who calmly produced her own array of uppers and aphrodisiacs upon arrival, so they’d gone along with her request.

Virus leans back against the table beside him then. He’s grinning, ready to talk about sex as if they didn’t still have blood on their hands, and as he talks he absently picks up a family photo, torture victim sitting happily at a barbeque with his wife and daughter. “This one’s not bad. Anyway I still think about what you did sometimes, after I fucked her first. It was a little…abnormal, hm?”

Trip shifts uneasily. _What are you playing at?_ But the words tangle in his chest long before he can speak them, because he knows why Virus is bringing this up. He remembers all too well how he’d eaten her out immediately afterwards, how he’d done it to get a taste of _him_ , how Virus had watched with a keen interest, had even touched himself and used the same hand to stroke Trip’s face a moment later. “Those were some strong drugs.”

“Mm, I suppose,” he drops the framed photo onto the floor and kicks it absently at the prone figure before he runs a hand – the same hand he’d used that night -  down Trip’s arm, pausing to tap his fingers on his watch. “What did she say to you when she left? You blushed pretty hard.”

He remembers how she’d laughed in his ear, run her manicured fingers through his hair and kissed his cheek and whispered that next time he should just ask Virus if he could blow him, that the older man had said enough at the club for her to believe he would happily let Trip do whatever he wanted to him. He also remembers considering it for the shortest of moments. “Forget now, it’s been a while.”

It was the wrong thing to say, because suddenly Virus’ fingers are a vice around his wrist. “I agree. Let’s go out tonight. We did everything we had to do today.”

“I can’t.” He doesn’t have to say why.

“Have her come over then,” there is a desperation in his voice that Trip has never heard before and he feels sick.

“No.” He extricates himself from those tapered fingers and sighs. “I’ll go out with you tomorrow night.” But he doesn’t know if he will, doesn’t know if he can get in that kind of situation with Virus anytime soon without doing something he will regret. His lust for him has become nearly unbearable since he met _her_. Just yesterday there’d been a meeting at their more respectable work, and while Virus calmly gave Takahashi various updates, Trip had sunk into his chair and thought about fucking him, staring at his mouth and not catching a single word anyone said. He is enough of a spaceshot to get away with it, to just shrug and say he wasn’t listening if anyone grows irritated with him, but it was a dangerous indulgence nonetheless, one he finds himself slipping into all over again as Virus stares at him thin lips slightly parted. He shudders and rights himself abruptly, moving away from him and all of his temptations. “Come on, let’s go tell the boss what this fuck said.”

He ignores the accusatory look Virus shoots him. It carries more than he is ready to understand. He also ignores Virus’ sigh as he sinks down next to the man on the floor and picks up the family photo by the corner as if it were a dead rat and holds it up in front of the incoherent fool. Trip’s fairly certain he won’t last the night, and that he’ll have to come up with a good excuse as to why someone they were only supposed to intimidate ended up dead, because “ _we had a disagreement about sex_ ” was not going to work. 

 

\--- 9

"Tell me more about him.”

“Eh?” 

“Your room-mate. _Virus_." The word rolls off her tongue in a way that makes Trip flinch. _He killed someone this morning_. But he doesn’t say it. She already knows that about him, has to know. She’s seen Trip’s tattoos and his handgun. As much as she lies about herself, she knows they are Yakuza, and doesn’t seem to care much. “Show me pictures. We’ll pretend I didn’t look already.”

“Nosy little bitch,” but he feels that relief again, that settling in his veins of all the tension and uncertainty. He can show her now, can talk more freely about him. He pulls out his phone and unlocks it, ignoring the _tut-tut_ she makes when she sees he’s changed his password again, but the sound dies in her throat when she sees his wallpaper, one he’d taken only four days ago. The two of them grinning at the camera that Trip holds over them, Virus’ fingers curled around a coffee as he leans into the younger man, Trip’s hand pushing gently into the small of his back so that their pelvises touch. The sun is in their faces and Virus is squinting a little, but the effect somehow only makes him more attractive, innocent even.

“He’s cute,” she draws the word out, and Trip finds himself blushing faintly. He wonders if he’s somehow proud of Virus, of the fact that they could be mistaken for a couple these days just as much as they could be mistaken for brothers, and again remembers how easily she’d jumped to that conclusion from sneaking a glance at these photos once already.

“Ya here’s the photos folder. Mostly him or food. He sometimes sends me dick pics but you hafta go through the texts for those.”

If that fazes her, she says nothing, only grins and runs her tongue over her front teeth. She props herself up on her elbow and pulls the phone gently from his hand. “How’d you meet?”  

It isn’t the question he expects and he answers before he can catch himself. There is something about her that makes him want to talk and he is unsure what to make of that, if she merely reminds him of Virus or if it’s something else. _Why do you like moms so much?_ "I was little when we met and I just followed him everywhere. Thought he was pretty and he had nice color around him. Smelled and sounded safe I guess, not like other people. I just wanted to look at him all day.”

“At the institute?” He sees her pause in swiping through the pictures, thumb frozen over a photo of Virus giving Trip the finger, stacks of cash and bags of white powder lined up on the floor in front of him and a bent cigarette in a cig holder dangling from the corner of his mouth, but he knows it isn’t the photo that makes her pause.

“Yea.” He doesn’t give her time to reflect on that, finds himself unable to look at her as he rushes on, “I was seven maybe. He's six years older so..."

"It's funny that he let you then. Six years is too much for a kid." She’s continued moving through the photos.

"He is funny," and he feels a smile creep across his face as he turns and rolls into her, reveling in the crush of her breasts against his chest. "We stayed together and jes do everything together. I always figured...if he wanted me to fuck off, he'd just say it and I'd go, but he never says it. He had me move in with him when I was a teenager, helped me get a job."

"And he calls whenever you stay the night." She grins, because she knows those calls throw Trip off and she finds it cute, those calls that have come increasingly often ever since the night she had picked up and Trip had paled, snapped at her for touching it, and left early only to find Virus acting strange. _Was that your girlfriend? Her voice is…_

"Yea, fuck, he's kind of annoying sometimes. He's nosy, always asks questions, always wants to know where I am and who I’m screwing.”

“He seems really happy in all these with you though,” she is back to looking at them, really _looking_ at them. “You guys look like you take care of each other.”

“I guess.”

“He’s almost as tall as you, huh. Have any pictures of you two when younger?”

He hesitates a moment, “In cloud storage. Lemme see.” It only takes a few seconds to access what he needs and place the phone back into her grasping hands. He looks at her ring finger for the hundredth time and bites his lip as she studies the new photo; he’s unexpectedly self-conscious, aware of how often he touches Virus in pictures, of how regularly he puts his arm around him, curls around and over him, of how _territorial_ he looks, of the defensive glower even in his smiles while Virus grins into the camera, his stare knowing and satisfied. “Twenty-one there.”

“You’re only fifteen there? You’re huge. And your face looks older...” she sounds doubtful, uncertain, but she can’t disguise something else - _relief_.

“He’s got a babyface,” Trip snorts. “He used to have a kinda fat face but it’s not as bad now. Can still pinch his cheeks and make him blush though. I do it at work sometimes.”

“That’s mean.”

“He likes it, ‘n anyway he touches my face so much I can do it back. He taught me how ta shave not long after that pic.”

“So he kind of raised you.”

He frowns. It isn’t a concept he likes to reflect on very much, because he and Virus are equals, complementing one another, making up for the other’s flaws. They are not dependent on one another, as far as he’s concerned, and the idea of Virus _raising_ him in lieu of a _mother_ changes things, though he must admit that he might be more sensitive to the notion of inequality between them now than he would have been even a month ago. Because something is shifting between then, the weight of Trip’s secret causing something from deep below the surface to bubble forth as the ice begins to crack. “Little bit, but he’s kinda childish himself. Everyone just thinks he’s the mature one ‘cause he’s got glasses and is older. But when he’s got a problem I take care of it. It evens out.”

“Mmm, problems?”

“Ya I’ll tell you someday,” _as long as you keep coming back to me._ Though he knows Virus would kill him if he knew, if he was aware of just how much Trip knew about him, much less if he was aware of what Trip was saying to others; he adds as an afterthought, “He’s fine though. Why’dya care so much about him anyway?”

She swipes through a few more photos before tapping the phone against her chin. “’Cause he’s the one I have to compete with for you, I guess,” she shrugs, and before Trip can speak she asks, “He has tattoos, too?”

“Dragon like my tiger. We match. Some of the same patterns and colors, same artist.” He pauses when he sees exactly what she’s looking at, a flood of warmth in the pit of his belly building as he considers what she’d just said. “Hey, that’s a bath pic - don’t look.”

“You were okay with dick photos earlier.”

“He does those to be gross though. Doesn’t even know I took that one,” but he laughs a little from the center of his mouth as he curls his mouth to the side, an old habit leading to slurred words. Virus is nothing but _pretty_ in that picture, leaning over the far side of the tub with his head resting on folded arms. The majority of his tattooed back was visible, a naked knee breaking the water’s surface beside him. Though Trip had snapped his profile, Virus was looking away, off at nothing, and he’d never even known Trip was there. He looked content, rapidly approaching that sleepy heat-stupor he often fell into when bathing that left his eyes heavy-lidded and his cheeks flushed.

"Do I remind you of him?"

"Huh?" The words startle him, unfurl some inexplicable unease deep inside of him as he breaks from his reverie of Virus, his skin soft and wet and pliant after soaking for so long, his gaze sleepy and his words heavy with contentment when he’d lifted his face and asked Trip to join him several minutes after that photo was taken, and suddenly he recalls what Virus had said that night when she’d picked up the phone. _Her voice is… familiar._

She squeezes her legs together and Trip immediately relaxes as he realizes where his hand was. He hadn’t even noticed when he’d moved, slipped his fingers inside of her. She’s still wet from earlier, when he’d brought her to orgasm with only his mouth. Oral was not normally something he bothered with, especially not the sort that involved time and effort and didn’t involve his dick, but he’s discovered that the boundaries are sliding with her, or perhaps it had been too late the second he’d laid eyes on her. A second night, a third and a fourth and a fifth until he stopped counting. Nights that stretched into mornings and afternoons as opposed to his usual hookup method of leaving immediately after sex. And the _sex_. “You get horny every time you talk about him, you know. You think I look like him. I mean…” she waves the phone at him.

“You _do_ ,” he grins as he sinks his fingers into her still further and pushes his thumb against her clit, watches her eyes dilate and her lips part. _This is where he came from, this is the closest I can ever get to him, this slick heat_. The thought makes him dizzy with need. He remembers the way his dick had twitched when he first saw her in glasses, hair in a messy bun on her head and a pen in her mouth as she admitted she’d lost one of her contacts. “Not a lotta blondes here.”

“Certainly not _you_ ,” she pushes down against him as she touches his nose and he immediately spreads his fingers. She’d been startled when she’d first seen his red pubic hair, had seemed nervous even in a way that made Trip suspect for a moment that he was wrong - horribly, horribly wrong – but she’d shrugged it off in the end, had laughed when he said he dyed it to match Virus later on.

“But I can’t do this to him, can I?” And he flips her onto her back and rolls onto her as she arches up into him, dropping the phone on the pillow beside her as she does. She responds eagerly, and he finds himself marveling again at the energy and hunger middle-aged women possess.

She breaks the kiss to whisper in his ear, so softly he almost doesn’t catch it. “So he’s thirty now?”

“Shh don’t bring him up right now,” he murmurs in return, but the mere thought of Virus now makes him still harder and he grinds against her, beckoning her to wrap her legs around his hips. For his thirtieth birthday Trip had bought him new earrings, two pairs of course, so he could match, and he suddenly remembers the way Virus had leaned into him to put them on, the way he’d touched his neck and jawline as he tilted his head to look at how they sat on him, the way he’d sighed in satisfaction but left his hands where they were far longer than necessary.

“Fuck me like you’d fuck him,” she breathes, scraping manicured nails lightly down his broad back in such a way that breaks through his memories of Virus fingers touching him.

And he obeys.

He waits until she’s in the bathroom neatening up before going through her wallet. After all these nights, he still hadn’t touched it, hadn’t tried to find her license, her passport. He’d always figured it wouldn’t matter, because neither he nor Virus knew their birth names anymore, and if she was as much a criminal as she appeared to be, her own name was unlikely to be the original either. He’d also figured she might not even have any real identification, a fact which he knows now to be wrong as he flips a British work visa open and exhales softly.

_I was only seventeen when I first got pregnant_. _Yea? And how old are you now? Don’t ask a lady that._ He runs his finger slowly over the birthdate and tries not to consider the implications of her particular kind of visa, because he might have asked the wrong questions so long ago now.

 

\--- 10

"Hey," he says abruptly, tapered fingers suddenly gripping his sleeve. "I want to go shopping."

"Huh?"

"Shopping. I want new shoes." He hesitates a moment then, tilts his head as he rearranges his glasses. He can barely see without them, a fact that he once told Trip was comforting. It was nice to be able to shut the world off from time to time. "I'll have money coming in next week."

Trip exhales softly. "How much?"

"Three and a half million."

"The fuck are you doing for three and a half million?"

"Party." He shrugs and winks. "One of the higher-ups has a son who wants a last fling before being trapped in eternal bondage with a _woman_." The way he says the word is suggestive, accusatory, and Trip inwardly flinches as he continues. "Half a kilo of coke and designer drugs included."

"That’s dangerous with that much drugs involved. You gettin' paid up front I hope."

"Two thirds on Monday. Rest at the door Friday. They think you're hanging outside with a gun so they won't try to knock me off at the end."

"What if I got plans?" But he knows he'll be there, lurking in the dark, hoping someone will try something solely so he can kill everyone who paid through their teeth to fuck Virus that night.

"They don’t know that."

"Do we need the money that bad..."

"New shoes. Come on." He gently takes Trip's arm, guides him towards the front door, and Trip complies. He leans in to catch his scent as he opens the door, and inwardly he seethes at their circumstances.

In all the stories he'd heard by now, there remained one constant in the years before the abandonment, a constant that Trip knew was in his own past as well as Virus', the residue thereof impossible to wash away no matter how lavishly they dressed themselves, how royally they ate. It was in their joints, their marrow, in their blood just as much as their genetic makeup was, because one never truly escaped poverty. He knows that Virus hides it better, that his oafish silence lends people to believe he is mentally slow in some way, that the term _white trash_ is regularly thrown around when they think he isn't listening. And he knows that Virus defends his origins better, the one time someone had calmly asked Virus if he'd been raised in a trailer down in the United States' pubic region, he'd been dragged away with both kneecaps blown out. Virus' exorbitant spending betrays him. They live comfortably, the paychecks from Toue alone enough for them to survive, and whatever surplus they make in the Yakuza enough for them to enjoy themselves, but there is a frenzy to the way Virus earns and spends money, as if he has a vendetta against it. It is that, far more than the number of fillings in his teeth or his low-grade anemia or the feral viciousness that he scarcely hides, or the fact that he wasn't full-grown until his early twenties, that gives him away. Because as little as he remembers of his childhood before the institute, the idea that money is an elusive and transient creature, to be seized and spent as quickly as possible before it's taken from him, has seeped into his blood. And so Virus spends, he spends and spends and does whatever he has to do to keep going.

That night Virus gets plastered, as he is prone to do after large expenses, and when he leans on Trip’s shoulder as they sit on the couch and watch old Italian mobster movies that neither of them can follow sober, he touches him, pulls at his clothing and buries his face in his chest and inhales deeply. “You smell so good these days. That lady you’re with now, she’s got nice perfume. Makes me….”

“Horny?” he bites back the hopefulness in his voice.

“Hum, not sure. A little. Sad, too, I think,” he all but hiccups as he rolls against Trip, pressing far too much of his lithe body against him, crotch bumping against his hip in such a way that the younger man can’t ignore his hardon despite what he’d said. “You’re with her so much all your clothes smell now.”

It’s the last thing either of them say before Virus falls asleep, and when Trip moves to go clean up and sleep in his own bed, he lies him down on the sofa and pulls a blanket over him, but not before touching him gently, running a hand up his thigh and hesitating at his hip. It’s the closest he dares go, because he can’t understand Virus’ game anymore, if it even is one, which he increasingly doubts as the days pass and the ice grows thinner beneath their feet.

 

\--- 11

“He was born premature, a tiny little thing. I was so sick my entire pregnancy, I always thought something was wrong…just a feeling mothers get when the baby isn’t moving enough, and then he came too early. I felt like he hated me when he was little, you know that feeling sometimes? When you see someone and there’s that crawling feeling deep down – I felt like he was still inside of me somehow, like I’d never shed myself of him properly. There was a cancer still in there and what was born was not an entire human. I couldn’t hold him, he’d just squirm away and scream, go rigid in my arms like he didn’t recognize me. I had to bottlefeed him because he would bite.”

“You don’t mind people biting your tits now.” But he’s dwelling on that word. A _cancer_. A disease.

She swats at him. “Don’t talk like that in public.” Because they are in public. _A dinner date_ , was what she had asked for last time, and Trip had agreed quicker than expected.

He only shrugs back, runs fingers down the palm of her hand and waits for her to go on. He doesn’t remember how many nights it’s been now, how many dinners and how many fucks and how many conversations, but he knows it’s been a dangerous amount, and he knows he’s rapidly growing addicted to her voice. She’s pretty tonight too, even more so than she normally is, in a red dress with a slit up the thigh and her hair curled. He has to admit her face routines help; despite being nearly fifty she could easily pass for a decade younger.

“He just spent that first year screaming. I had to move once because the landlord kicked me out. People complained too much. He never slept more than two hours at a time that first year, and I couldn’t hold him. I’d just have to sit there and watch him howl. I hated him so much. I always heard about people who loved their babies, how their infants would smile at them. He did nothing. I don’t think he ever even saw me. I thought he had brain damage but medical bills were too expensive. Then he just….stopped. When he turned one he stopped crying, stopped doing anything really.” She pauses and withdraws her hand from his. “You ever hear the bad seed story?”

“American urban legend,” he snorts. She had picked the wine and it isn’t sweet enough for him; he can’t distract himself by getting drunk and he’s getting impatient for sex. This narrative isn’t as entertaining as the last one and an unease is creeping onto him. “Bullshit. All children are horrible.”

“He wasn’t outwardly horrible though, for a while there. There was just something wrong with him. He was really smart, but he didn’t want to talk much. He’d just read and he’d study people, like they were insects or something. When he got a little older and I tried to send him to school… he got obsessed with a teacher.”

Trip rolls a piece of agedashi tofu around but doesn’t eat it; he’s pretty sure he’s never eaten it before and isn’t particularly interested in trying now. “How old?”

“Five or six? It sounds stupid I know,” she laughs then and downs her second glass of wine before the main course has even arrived, “but he used to try to follow her everywhere. And he said he was going to kill her husband. He started doing weird things to her. I kept getting calls at work but nobody could prove anything. She said he’d poured some kind of poison, drain cleaner she thought, into her thermos once.”

“That’s too crazy. How’s a kid even get that? She was probably mental.”

“He walked to and from school and he’d steal from the conbini. I caught him at it a few times but…”

“You didn’t tell him to stop. You gonna dine and dash tonight?” He slips a foot up her leg beneath the table and wonders absently if she’d be willing to have sex in the bathroom here after she finishes another yarn of nonsense about why her son is _gone_. “Go on.”

She pulls her leg in and grins at him, as if she were enjoying herself. “He’d just do things like that. Sometimes I’d have to leave him at the neighbors or in day care because of work, but I’d get complaints, and after a while nobody would take him. Usually he’d just say things…convinced one girl her parents weren’t her real parents, that’d she been kidnapped. He’d goad other kids into fighting each other. Nobody in the neighborhood wanted to be with us anymore. And after that teacher thing…well I had to move three or four times because of him. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was hungry all the time, in trouble with loan sharks, and he was just so awful at home. He wasn’t even twenty-five kilograms and I was scared of him, funny huh. I was more scared of him than the Yakuza who kept coming around about money.”

“You got in trouble with the Yakuza? What a coincidence you like to fuck them now.”

“I had to fuck them then, too, and the kid used to watch. I heard stories from other girls…’bout sons who even as little as two would try to protect them from husbands, men who hit them, but this one just watched. He’d look…disgusted, like he was embarrassed by me.”  She twirls one of her earrings and suddenly smiles over Trip’s shoulder at the waiter.

Trip sighs and leans back. He hasn’t worn a full suit in weeks and he already feels constricted, though the interested look Virus had given him when he’d walked out the door was enough to tide over his suffering. _Ladykiller, why don’t you get that dressed up more often?_ “So you got rid of him?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

 

\--- 12

It’s been long enough now that he feels like things should be different, like Virus should have realized exactly what he was doing, that the door that should never have been acknowledged had not only been unearthed and unlocked, but opened and entered.  But Virus notices nothing beyond the fact that somehow, they are no longer as _even_ as he once thought they were, that Trip is no longer acting normally. Not even after that night so long ago now, when he had called Trip to ask something about work before pausing a long moment and then telling him to have a good night. Trip had gone home then, even before midnight, because hearing Virus’ voice while lying next to _her_ unsettled him, and his room-mate had just raised an eyebrow and grinned, asked if his phone call had caused any trouble. It was a strange question, one of those he asked from time to time that left Trip wondering if he wanted some pushback, but as usual, he never asked for elaboration, and Virus would eventually fall silent.

And as the weeks and months pass, the older man grows more and more irritable, gives up on asking to meet whoever Trip spends his nights with, and instead finds ways to worm his way into the rest of his life. Because Virus has all but moved into his bedroom, sleeping beneath Trip’s sheets even on the nights he is away. Trip wants to believe it’s jealousy, but he can’t bring himself to accept that it’s anything other than Virus pitching a fit because their patterns were disrupted, and he can’t bear it when his one constant in life becomes unpredictable. No, Trip doesn’t think Virus has any idea who she is, what she might mean to both of them and their relationship beyond an inconvenience, which drives him to ask one morning, out of curiosity when he catches his partner staring at a story on the news about an abandoned baby with a mixture of disgust and amusement.

“What would you do if you met your mom?”

Virus pauses and looks up, out the window and away, and a stillness comes over him as he studies the rain. When he answers, he doesn’t look at Trip, and his words cut through the air despite his lazy smile. “Play Russian roulette with her cunt.”

It’s not the answer he was expecting, and it takes him a moment to find the saliva in his mouth for a reply. He has to swallow, roll his tongue over his teeth. “With your dick or your gun?”

The older man turns to him then, abruptly, flicking a hand out to caress his face as he leans forward. He runs the pad of his thumb slowly over Trip’s lower lip and grins. He’s too close, and Trip can feel the heat rise in his face and pool in his gut as he resists the urge to open his mouth and bite him. “How long have you known me, hm?”

“Seventeen years,” he replies immediately. _Approaching eighteen._

He shows far too many teeth as he leers, presses his thumb down and forces Trip’s mouth open as the rest of his fingers stroke his throat. He’s close enough to kiss him now, but he doesn’t, and Trip abruptly remembers a time last year when Virus had been giving him a shoulder massage, had unexpectedly leaned in and pressed his lips to the back of his neck. _You have a thick neck, mm, and your traps are really nice. How did you get like this? It makes me a little jealous, but then I just want to touch you._ But this time he cocks an eyebrow and laughs. “You look scared.”

Whatever tension was between them broke in that moment, as Trip shoves him off, scoffs and mutters. “You know I ain’t, even when you fly off the handle.” But the resistance he’d felt when Virus backed off settles in his fingertips; he’d be willing to go along with whatever the older man did to him and they both know it, both know the reverse is just as true.

Virus laughs lightly and waltzes towards the door, turning his hip in _that way_ again before stopping at the edge of the hall. “And Trip?”

“Huh.”

“You know I had the same operation as you. Can only play with blanks for so long before...” He shrugs, almost apologetically, and is gone before Trip can respond.

 

\--- 13

“I don’t like talking to men about the real reason, I guess. They always assume….it’s like every action I do with men thereafter is explained by it, you know?”

It takes effort not to roll his eyes. He knows where this is going before she says it, has heard it all before. He attracts a certain type, after all. Older women drawn to dangerous men who give off a certain vibe, who usually went for the wrong guy at some point, who no longer felt like they could maintain a normal relationship, who even felt like they deserved more men like that. These were the women Trip most frequently attracted, and he knew how to play the role they wanted. Undeniably dangerous to everyone but them, quiet and emotionally disinterested, a big but ultimately harmless dog. He’d never admit to Virus that half the time when he hooked up with someone, they wouldn’t even have sex, and all he’d get out of it was easy cash and tits to fall asleep on while someone stroked his hair and felt competent around men for a few hours. It ended up working out for all parties involved, and he never found women particularly interesting when hurt anyway. But he certainly didn’t care how they ended up such sad messes, either, so his next words surprise even himself.

“Why is it always sob stories huh? Why can’t you just say ‘I’m a selfish bitch who ditched my kid because he was annoying?’ My mom left me in a coin locker in Karasuma station in Kyoto twenty-four years ago and I don’t care. You ain’t impressing me with the lies.” He says it calmly, nonchalantly, but the temperature in the room drops and he feels something shift, _die_ , between them. He thinks of a creature slowly suffocating in his gut, clawing at his insides, and he grits his teeth.

“Is that really…what happened to you?” As she speaks, there is a pained expression on her face, drawn and exhausted and afraid.

“Ya.” But he isn’t sure if it is. He doesn’t remember, after all. He heard a lot of stories, a lot of whispers about him in the place of white walls, and never cared to know which was true. “Don’t matter now though. So you don’t got to keep trying to make excuses.”

She doesn’t answer. All she says is a soft, “That’s sad.”

Pity is one thing he has always despised and the aggression in his voice rises as he snaps, “I _said_ I don’t care.”

“That’s what’s so sad.”

“What’s sad is you were gonna tell me a story ‘bout how you got raped and shouldn’t I pity you for selling your son after. Like anybody even cares about that stuff.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and Trip almost laughs, almost punches her, almost snaps her wrist and throws her against the wall and takes her hard when she moves next and slaps him full across the face. There is a strength and a viciousness in her that is unexpected, like a pit viper, and the fight in her makes his dick jump but he stops himself in time, crushing her hand in his while staring her down. There'd been a nurse at the institute, a young woman he'd pushed around, groped and kissed and bit but ultimately lost interest in, and that was when he had understood. He’d only been fourteen then, already strong enough to take adults by force if he wanted to, but though he wanted sex and had no particular concern for the autonomy of those around him, because after all he took what he wanted and consent, like respect, was earned, he simply couldn’t be bothered at that time. _Because she wasn’t Virus and he wasn’t going to sully himself with her._ That had changed as he’d grown older, and he’d found enough older women eager to fulfill his need without him resorting to force – the same women who came to him because they like dangerous men, but thought him too cute and young to cause what they were running from, bruises under their makeup and mace in their purses – but they still sometimes leave him wanting, leave him craving a fight and a chance to beat and violate someone into submission.

But if she sees the violence in his eyes, and Trip knows that she does, she doesn’t react. Instead she hisses softly, “What would you know about getting raped?”

“He got raped as a kid, whole time he was at the institute. Since he was nine.” _Twelve_ , Virus would say twelve, but Trip had done enough research to know better, though he’s uncertain if Virus lies simple to lie or because he himself can’t remember. Because Virus claims to remember nothing of his life before they met, whereas Trip has found enough evidence to at least trace him to within a few months of him being sold to Toue Inc. He’s fairly certain Virus wouldn’t appreciate this observation, but he continues regardless as he watches what little color in her cheeks drain, “They sold videos even. Now he’s a whore and let’s everyone fuck him for money, especially anyone who’s a doctor. Says it’s no big deal, what happened when he was a kid, and only half-evolved twats think it’s anything a shower won’t solve. Don’t think you got it so rough. It’s just sex.”

It takes her a moment to speak, to work her mind around the abrupt turn of events, and Trip can feel the tremor in her wrist as she finally snaps, “Are we talking about your room-mate or me?”

“You tell me,” He spits.

She rips her hand away from him, twisting her wrist and jerking outward at his thumb, as if this is an act she’d done countless times before, as if Trip were not thirty centimeters taller and over twice her weight. He knows he could just snap the bone, knows he could take her and kill her and no one would be the wiser, though maybe something buried deep in Virus would finally dissolve and he’d sleep better at night, but he lets her go.

He lets her go and he lets her raise her hand again to touch him, and there’s something in his sudden complacence that at once alarms and saddens him. _Nights stretching into mornings and afternoons_ , he’s growing dangerously attached to this woman, and his life is no longer in his control. Her fingers probe his scalp a moment before settling on a faint ridge of scar tissue and he dully remembers when she’d first asked what it was, when he’d shrugged and said lobotomy and she’d laughed in response, said that it was in the right place for stereotactic bilateral cingulotomy and if he’d had a lobotomy he wouldn’t be so rough in bed. _Journalist, my ass, who knows what the hell that is_? He remembers the notes on the work visa he’d found in her wallet that night and tastes bile in his throat when she speaks again, “He does it for you.”

“Don’t talk like you know him,” but the fight has gone from him and they both know it.

“I know _you_.”

 

\--- 14

The night is colder than expected, even for late January, and Trip is grateful that for the location of Virus’ party, he can park close enough that he doesn’t have to get out. Once he’d done this and had been invited in because of the rain, a night where he felt he were perched at the yawning mouth of Hell as he sat and drank and listened to that perfect white light have sex with four people in the next room. He’d had to pretend it didn’t faze him, because for all the intimacy between them, the concept of jealousy was never supposed to exist. _And still doesn’t, regardless of how odd Virus has been acting,_ he tells himself _._

Virus leans over immediately upon returning to the car, calmly slides a wad of cash into Trip's coat pocket. "I don't know what you need money for but..."

"What you talking about?"

He grins, too many teeth showing. "You thought I wouldn't notice 1.2 million yen out of our account?"

So that's it. Trip exhales slowly, dread and disgust seeping into his veins as he fully understands then. This was all for him after all, all because he'd been borrowing massive amounts recently for her new hotel in Platinum Jail, all because he wanted her to stay longer while in comfort and he wouldn’t have to keep having sex on a business hotel bed and he could take baths with her in the hot tub, and he'd foolishly thought Virus wouldn't notice. It wouldn't be the first time he'd done something like this for him. They'd never talked about what he had done to get Trip into the Yakuza, never talked about the obscenely expensive gifts he would present to him on birthdays, but Trip had always known. He'd always known, and he'd always despised it, but jealousy was not in their makeup and he had kept silent.

Despite this, he catches himself saying the words he never thought he'd say, the words he thought every night Virus slipped off after eleven with another man and returned spent and unsatisfied. "I'll get the money back on my own. I don't want you doing this shit anymore."

Virus sinks back into his seat and sighs. "So that's it. It's for your lady friend then. Figured."

He opens his mouth only to close it again. He's said too much already.

"You don't want my help with her, huh." He says it pleasantly enough, but Trip can taste the hurt and rage simmering beneath the words, and he wonders if he’s losing him.

"Got nothing to do with that." But he's fairly certain she would slap him again if she found out what had just transpired. She’d texted him that morning, asking when he was coming by again, and Trip already half-suspects she will hit him the moment she sees him. She doesn’t need to know that her hotel room was paid with her probable son’s ass, not that selling him was an issue for her twenty years ago.

"Then what?"

_I don't want everyone on this island but me fucking you_ , _and the reason I keep spending your money is so I can fuck a lady exactly like you because I can’t touch you, because you’re..._ But he can't say it. Instead he shrugs. "Complicated, I guess. I'll take a mark next week and make up for it."

There is ice in his voice as he replies. "Good. Make it two. Matsuda has limited frames coming out next month and I want them." 

_Better pissed than hurt_. He rolls his eyes as he puts the car in drive and slides into traffic. "Fine."

For once Virus doesn't try to get the last word in, but he pulls his knees to his chest and pointedly stares out the window the entire ride home. If his comment hadn’t indicated he was assuming a continued shared account in a month’s time, Trip realizes he might have felt afraid.

 

\--- 15

“Remember when you said he had problems sometimes? What are they?” She asks the question carefully, though she’d gone back to her old self quickly enough after that ugly night and they’d fucked three times since.

Trip tilts his head back and sighs. He knows why she’s asking, that it has to do with his comments that time. He isn’t eager to talk about that now, the videos he’s seen, the things he’d witnessed as a child that he didn’t understand at the time, and Virus’ bizarre doctor fetish that leads him to freeze like an animal in headlights and meekly do whatever someone in a white coat tells him to do. There are safer routes in this conversation. "Uhm. Sometimes he gets emotional when he drinks or does shabu."

" _What_?"

"I guess. He acts like he's normal then. Gets a little sad or whatever and I gotta sit with him. But he does it back for me when I get like that," a statement that doesn’t begin to cover what Virus has done for him over the years, all those times he had been his grounding light, his safe zone in the midst of a sensory breakdown, a soft whisper in his ear and tapered fingers running down his scalp and back until he relaxed again. There’s a reason why he doesn’t indulge in drugs and alcohol to the degree Virus does, because his everyday world is already dangerously unstable, and only his roommate can know the extent of it.

"He does shabu?"

"S'what I said."

"A lot?"

"He's not an addict. He's fine. He just gets kinda weird. Sad or clingy or somethin’." He doesn't consider Virus an addict because he never sticks with one thing for very long. But he also knows he does far more than he should, that others in the Yakuza have even pulled him aside over the years and warned him about his room-mate's habits, that he'd spent his share of nights sitting on the bathroom floor and holding Virus while he convulsed and vomited his way through a bad batch. "Why you worried about him anyway?"

She doesn't respond to that. Instead she smiles faintly, runs a finger up Trip's arm. "Maybe he does that shit because he's jealous."

"He doesn't care what I do."

"Doesn't sound that way."

"He just gets shitfaced sometimes."

"He calls you every night."

"He likes talking too much." He isn't sure if he should be annoyed that she is bringing this up.

"He sleeps in your bed all the time."

"He gets cold." But even as he speaks, he realizes something isn't right. He wouldn't talk about that. It's too close. "When did I tell you that?"

"Sometimes you say things in your sleep. _Move it, Virus. Don't hog the blankets, Virus_ ,” she grins as she says it, and has the decency to blush for his sake. And then she kisses him, deep and slow and dominating. She’s breathless when she pulls back, but she is still grinning, “Like you get confused about who you’re sharing a bed with.”

He shrugs, “You don’t just look like him. You’re kinda like him except you lie too much. He doesn’t lie. He’s too stupid.”

“What makes you think I lie?”

“Those stories, they don’t all fit. You say he was just bad so you gave him up. He got sick and was too expensive so you had to give him away. You got raped and couldn’t keep the baby. He couldn’t be all that.” But even as he says it all, something is wrong. _There is no real contradiction_.

“You don’t even see me, do you? You only ever see him. It hurts, you know,” she sighs.

“Ain’t going to marry you, whatever you want. We just fuck so don’t get ideas.”

“You don’t understand.”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh I do and I’m not goin’ for that.”

She shakes her head and smiles then, but it is empty and he can see the hardness, the malice and hurt in her eyes that he hasn’t seen in weeks, and he is already recoiling, disgusted by commitment, when she leans in and whispers the next words so softly he feels more than he hears them.

The question hits him like a tank and he finds himself in freefall, a concept he’d always thought he’d understood since he first laid eyes on Virus and felt his life begin to unravel, or perhaps only finally focus, but one he now realizes he could never even hope to comprehend. He remembers words, phrases, comments, actions and touches that didn’t line up, a visa in her purse and too much knowledge in her eyes, and the bile rises in his throat and he opens his mouth to say something, anything, only to find silence. He remembers Virus’ fingers curling around a cup of coffee that morning so long ago now and wonders how long they’d been wrapped around his throat, poised and ready to drag him into the depths beneath the ice for a slow demise.

 

\--- 16

The image stays with him, imprinted on the back of his eyelids every time he lies down, as he takes the ferry to the mainland on a fake identification and makes his way to Aomori. He’s rarely been this far north, and something about the cold there in February, the rawness of the air and the emptiness of the mountains between pockets of civilization, makes him filled with a wrath he puts to use with brass knuckles and a bolt cutter.

He kills the first man slowly, and as he lays drowning in his own blood Trip absently goes through his fridge. There are magnets on the door, photos of a little girl and a smaller boy who will never see their father again, and there’s something in the irony of parents who willfully do things that cause their own disappearances that makes him scowl. He leaves the fridge open, tilts the door in such a way that the magnets watch his mark die, and drinks the beer he finds hidden in the back. An acquaintance of his within the Yakuza had once complained that Trip was too messy at times, that when the family ran a mark it was supposed to be obvious it was mob activity so the police would back off, that Trip made the crime scene look like a serial killer when he was bored. _So don’t bore him_ , Virus had said calmly in reply, cutting in before Trip could react with violence.

When the breathing decays into bubbles, he steps on his chest, hoping to bring one last scream out of him, but he’s too far gone by then and Trip sighs, wonders if he’s losing his touch, if even this aspect of his life has been disrupted by the madness that he stupidly chased late last November. He leaves the body where it lies, as requested – there’s no need to dispose of a corpse when a message is supposed to be left – and returns to the hotel, frustrated and unsatisfied and what he uncomfortably suspects is _lonely_.

It’s a long night, and no amount of jerking off and porn in varying degrees of legality can do anything to help that. When Virus calls, he doesn’t pick up. _Missed it in the shower_ , is what he texts him later, though it’s a lie. He isn’t ready to hear his voice.

The second man is in Yokohama, though he’d promised to run a few weapons down in Niigata before making his way further down. He was to spend nearly a week on the entire trip, a period away from Midorijima that he would be uncomfortable with a year ago, but a period nearly unbearable now because, as he was realizing, it was not only time away from Virus but time away from _her_.

The man who’d given him both marks was the tired husband of the woman who was fuku-honbuchi of the Midorijima Yakuza. He’d sighed when Trip said he needed to off two unless they wanted to pay him double, and said it would be best if he had two that were on opposite sides of the country unless he wanted to wait a month in between. Then he had paused, cigarette forgotten in his hand as he asked, _Virus told me you two had words; is this for him? Don’t matter if it is or not. Do what you have to do and don’t lose him, dumbass, because nobody here wants to deal with the fallout if you two have a problem_. Trip hated him in that moment, hated him for being Virus’ sponsor, for being his regular lay for the last twelve years, for getting Trip the position he currently had because Virus asked enough, for obviously caring about them in ways that were both foreign and foul to him, but he’d said nothing. Just shrugged again and took the envelope. _Long fucking train ride_ , was the last thing Trip had said on the matter.

 

\--- 17

He almost doesn’t answer the phone the second night, after dropping off the guncase but before the second mark. He doesn’t like being interrupted in this line of work, not even by Virus at times and certainly not by women, which makes it all the more alarming when he picks it up; not even Virus could talk to him last night, but her last words ring in his ears and as he lifts the phone to his ear he bites back the implications of that thought.

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.”

“I wish you could,” she says simply, and he knows she is shrugging, smiling that knowing smile; he isn’t prepared for the relief he feels in hearing her voice again, the spiraling gratitude that she called, because he certainly never would, as she continues, “I don’t like apologizing so I’m not going to bother again.”

“Good,” he hesitates, mulls the words over in his mind, the words he’d almost said last week, their last night together, the words that could have explained things, or could have revealed things. He’d never told anyone before, not even the doctors as a child -  “You were right though, ‘bout seeing Virus. I can’t see faces great, have trouble with that since I was a kid, brain damage maybe. He’s okay,” – and even as he says it he regrets, because once again she has somehow caused him to say more than he wanted to and he’s unsure exactly why she draws the words forth from him when so much of his life was spent buried in selective mutism. _That is only for Virus to know._

She takes it in stride though, and doesn’t give him a chance to reflect further. “Maybe you’re just a self-absorbed asshole.”

“Probably.” He is grateful she doesn’t push the subject. “Whatchu doing tonight?”

“Calling you. You can’t come see me, can you?”

“Naw, on the mainland for work. I’ll be back inna few days, week maybe.”

“I don’t even want to know what you’re doing. Bet it involves murder and mayhem. Ever had phone sex?” She says it all in one breath, and Trip is reminded so much of Virus that he feels a jolt down his spine. He wonders yet again what this woman does for a living.

“You’re direct. A few times. Got a girl I see sometimes who likes it but she watches tentacle hentai when we do it.”

“You run with an interesting crowd. You want to do it? I guess it’s embarrassing for my age but I always see it in movies.”

“Kinda is but s’okay,” and he tries not to think about how Virus regularly says and does embarrassing things, only to quickly say he’d seen it in a movie or heard it was fun, as he drops his voice to the low growl he knows she can’t keep her clothing on for as he throws himself back on the bed and asks what she is wearing.

He lasts nearly fifteen minutes, in part to try and maintain her pace and in part because he found his mind wandering.

It isn’t long after he comes when he hears a beeping in the background. “I gotta go. Virus is calling.”

Trip can taste the smile in her sigh and not for the first time he wonders why she seems so satisfied about his attraction to Virus, “He’s always your priority, isn’t he?”

“Ya I told you. I only see him,” he bares his canines in a grin.

“Come back soon then. Good night, hun.”

He makes a sound halfway between a grunt and a laugh and mutters something in return before switching lines. _Hun_. “Yo, Virus.”

“Were you talking to the lady friend?”

“Talking ta you now.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” he says cheerfully, in that no-nonsense shit-eating way of his.

“Is it?” He freezes a moment as he runs the dates in his head. “Not even she mentioned that…”

Virus makes a soft sound that might be an embarrassed laugh, and Trip knows he’s biting his lip before he inhales deeply and speaks again, “You should go get a hooker. You’re in Tokyo now, right?”

“Naw, train ride was a bitch and I don’t want to go out. Don’t like the web-order ones I can’t feel up before I got ‘em in my room.”

“You’re always so worried about girls stuffing bras, huh. You should at least have phone sex tonight.”

“You offering?” He’d never be so daring, and he surprises himself. Because this kind of comment isn’t unusual for Virus, and as far back as Trip can remember, the older man had always been oddly concerned with making sure he was getting enough sex. He had a habit of asking for details and then immediately retracting the question, saying he didn’t really want to know, all the while painfully interested.

There’s that soft laugh again and Trip grins, licks his lips, as Virus fumbles through an answer. “I’m a little drunk.”

“I can tell.”

Virus heaves a sigh then, and is quiet a moment before he abruptly asks. “Everything okay? With the job?”

The next ten minutes goes by easily. There’s no need to hesitate with the details, Virus having modified every burner phone Trip has ever used so that he alone can tap into them – Trip had never asked if it’s something Virus actually does, had never even thought much about until now.

“So you’ll be back the day after tomorrow?”

“Yea. I deposited half the money already s’go order your glasses. Got you a present, too.”

“For Valentine’s Day? Oh you shouldn’t have,” his voice pleasant but dripping with sarcasm.

“No, you drunk fuck. Just ‘cause I traveled.” It’s an old habit, begun the first time Trip had ever gone to the mainland, had eagerly bought Virus the typical souvenir gifts and at the tender age of fifteen had thought was appropriate. But Virus had accepted them happily enough, after staring at him in confusion and bluntly calling him cute, and he’d shared the box of sweets with him, the two of them having to look every other _wagashi_ online.

He sighs, makes another odd sound. “Got excited for a second. It’s more weird confections, huh? You really should get a hooker.”

_Those sounds._ He understands then. “Are you alone?”

“Mm hmm.”

It isn’t the answer he expects, and he mulls it over a long moment before sliding his hand down his belly and coming to rest his fingers just where his pubic hair begins, still damp and sticky from the previous call. “You alone all day?”

“Hooked up with a cute girl earlier. Some nursing student who came up to me in a bar and commented on my eyes. Med people always notice them first, maybe because of the rumors about those experiments. Makes it easy to fuck doctors,” he breaks off, laughing quietly.

“You and your weirdo fetishes,” he sighs, but he’s distracted now. _The eyes are what anyone in the field always notice first._ He has to say something, anything. “A student though? Can’t believe you fucked someone your own age for once.”

“She was three years younger, had little glasses. Younger people aren’t bad, after all. I think…I’m plastered. Can’t think or talk straight. I gotta…” he sighs now, clearly distracted by something more than just his Freudian slip.

Trip hisses softly and his fingers move further down. _She_ doesn’t matter now. Only Virus does, Virus who is finally exploring sex with people younger than himself. “Want me to stay on the line?”

“Yea just talk. I’m too drunk.”

And he talks, whatever nonsense comes to mind, things he saw up north, the increasingly bizarre porn he’d watched the night before, ideas for future trips next time they get time off, all the things, he realizes as the words roll out of him, that they used to talk about together, before _she_ happened and that tension grew between them. The thought makes him feel ill, and only in that moment when he stops moving does he realize he’d been stroking himself while listening to Virus’ occasional murmurs of agreement, something he’d done naturally just at the thought of him alone in bed, drunk and lonely. It’s then when he cuts himself off, tells him he needs to sleep, but the older man is already asleep, soft snores into the phone most likely still pressed against his face. “Don’t drool on it,” he mutters to himself; when he places the phone on the pillow, he switches it to speaker instead of hanging up.

As he closes his eyes, he listens to his breathing, but all he can think about are those little noises Virus made from time to time, the sighs, the hitches in his breath every so often. He might have been drunk, but he had been touching himself as well, that much Trip is certain of.

 

\--- 18

He does it on a whim, and is unaware of his actions until he’s stepping off the train at Shinanomachi station and in front of the largest hospital in the country. This kind of reckless, knee-jerk behavior should bother him, would bother him under any circumstance, but the ice beneath him has been cracking with increasingly regularity, screaming like gunshots in the dark, and he knows that nothing matters in the same way any longer. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, has never been in a normal hospital that he can recall, has never dared go near one after the Institute, not even when he’d suffered broken limbs and gunshot wounds. There were enough underground surgeons to get by without the sterile violence of whitewashed emergency rooms. But it’s easy enough to follow signs, find the pediatric ward, the maternity ward.

“Father visits for newborns begin at 13:00,” the woman at the desk drawls the moment he enters the ward, eyeing him as if disapproving of his outfit.

“Father?” he hesitates, wavers, uncertain now of his actions.

“First time? It’s a hard word to adjust to,” but she doesn’t sound particularly sympathetic, and he can see the indentation on her ring finger, as if someone somewhere in her past decided it was a particularly hard word to adjust to.

So he ignores her comment. “You got records of all babies from here on that thing?”

“Yep, whole country dating back 120 years, except for the rural hospitals that aren’t so good about keeping their databases up to par with the rest of us. You wondering if it _is_ a first time?”

“Maybe,” he’s not following her but he stalls for time and considers his options. They are better than he could have hoped; he might as well go all the way. “Can I look at them?”

“Patient confidentiality.”

“They’re fucking babies, they got no sense of that,” he snaps.

If she hadn’t been on her guard before, she is now, and Trip is very aware of his appearance, of the blackness of his clothes, of the blood splatters on his dark boots that anyone who worked in a hospital would recognize, and he makes his move before she can react. The gun comes out with an ease that he felt he was born with the first time he’d shot someone.

“I want all info for babies born a certain day thirty years ago. Tokyo, no. Whole country. Now.”

She raises her hands slowly, so far from the panic button he’s sure exists beneath the desk. “You can get that online without waving a gun at people.”

“Don’t be a cunt, I need the mas’ names. Can’t get those easy.”

“I can’t print all that. You’d need a flash drive.” She looks nonplussed, and for a moment he considers just shooting her and finding out how to access the information himself. He isn’t sure how it happened but he’s somehow reached a point in his life where the only people he can’t seem to control anymore are middle-aged women, a group he realizes he s rapidly growing to hate for that vulnerability they somehow reveal in him. _Mothers_.

“So gimme one,” and at least that is something she obeys, sighing as she inserts a thumb drive and raises her eyebrow at him.

“I didn’t have a chance to see what else is on here…”

It crosses his mind then that she’s stalling, and he ignores it. “All boys from February 23rd, 20xx. AB Blood type.”

“That narrows it down,” her voice drips with sarcasm. “Is that all?”

He hesitates. The disgust on that woman’s face when she’d realized he was a redhead. The surprise and unease at his age. The intimate knowledge of his medical history, of exact surgeries. The concern over if he was fucking Virus. _I know you_. And as much as he grapples in the sand at all she’s told him, what she had said that night was true. There were no real discrepancies, no real ones, unless one assumed there was _one_ child. _When did I ever say I only had one son?_

“No,” and his voice is hoarse as he gestures impatiently with the gun and feels the ice crack beneath him. “Boys. B blood type. May 3rd, 20xx.”

 

\--- 19

It’s as if she knows the winds have shifted when he next sees her, when he disembarks from the ferry and she is waiting for him at the pier, her trim grey trenchcoat and knee-high boots too respectable for this part of the island. For all their clandestine meetings, they’ve rarely gone out in public together. A dinner here or there, a single shopping trip where she laughed at his fashion when he admitted to owning skirts and more pink items than most stores had and then promptly maxed out the lone credit card he carried for purchases he didn’t care about tracing and had no intention of paying for. But she says nothing now, only draws him back to her hotel with barely a word, only rolling her eyes when he stops to text Virus and tell him where he is. When they arrive in her room, Trip still exhausted and filthy from travel, she opens her coat to reveal nothing but panties and a bra that he has never seen before, and Trip exhales a “ _hussy, don't tell me you saw this in a movie, too_ ” that she only grins and shrugs to.

He takes her against the wall, not even bothering to take his coat off, and with every thrust he is aware of the hard drive in his pocket and all that it contains.

When it’s over, she briskly pulls him to the bed and he lets her control him, lets her drag him around and do as she wishes with him, something he has done with alarming regularity since she first appeared in his life, before she asks, “You really killed someone didn’t you?”

He shrugs, “Ya, one fuck who tried to scam one of our loan sharks and some poor slob who was supposed to be witness to a case against some big-shot’s nephew coming up.”

“That won’t be suspicious at all,” she rolls her eyes and seems remarkably nonchalant about the matter, though Trip supposes she has known this about him all along, that she was attracted to that part of him.

“Felt the same but a job’s a job. Anyways not like they want to hide who did it, just wanna show everyone else not to fuck with them, so it’s better to leave a calling card.” It’s more than he normally talks about work to any woman he’s with, better to keep it vague and monosyllabic, increase the mystery without compromising anyone and without having to actively waste effort lying, but as ever, she seems to be his exception. _Nights turning into mornings..._ he is making too much of an effort, and he is again reminded of how vulnerably he has been behaving around her. “Was it that obvious from the sex?”

“Hm?”

“That I killed somebody?” And he remembers a dozen times in the past when after a particularly brutal fight, after he carries out a hit, after he simply beats someone to a pulp or kills them for saying the wrong thing or looking at him sideways or bumping into him in an alley off their turf, he goes with a hooker to burn off the adrenaline only to have Virus eagerly asking him that night how rough he was in bed, if the sex was better when he had bloodied knuckles, if he ever hurt his partners and enjoyed it. Trip had never known how to handle those moments, how to sift through Virus’ inherent malice and sadism and come to any real conclusion about what he meant by his questions.

“You’re more fun after you get it out of your system.”

“Glad you ain’t deterred by murder.”

She laughs softly, and there is a hardness to it that makes Trip bite back a grin. It crosses his mind yet again that maybe, maybe she truly is no one, just a cruel and manipulative woman, lonely and capable of discovering weaknesses in men who don’t realize that they themselves have any. Maybe she is a spider, drawing hapless motherless men into her web and making them dependent on her, making them love her because she represents all they never had, and she spins a web of tales to ensure they stay until she grows bored. Maybe she truly is a female Virus, only in a way he’d never expected. And he wonders if he cares.

He lingers another hour, telling her far more than he knows he should about the trip, before glancing at his seven texts from Virus and remembering that he has to actually report what he’s done and deliver on some documents. Only when he’s leaving does she grab him at the door, red nails violent against the black of his coat sleeve, “Hey, you need to take me out to dinner before the 23rd.”

“Yea I’ll be busy that night. Call tomorrow ‘bout it.”

It’s only after he gets home and sees Virus that it hits him. He’d never told her his birthday.

 

\--- 20

“These sweets are weird.” Virus’ fingers, white and tapered and narrow, hover over the box of _wagashi_ as he scowls. He’d taken his glasses off several minutes before, further complicating the process of deciphering what’s what.

“I think you just give them to look pretty and only idiots eat ‘em. They’re not legitimate sweets.”

“Bastard candy,” Virus nods and puts one back in its space. “Let’s give this one to Takahashi-san tomorrow.”

“You licked it.”

He shrugs, pulls his knees up to his face and picks his teeth. “He has the hots for me so he’ll think it’s a bonus. The dry cleaner called and said your stuff was done.”

“What did I drop off?”

“Ah…” Virus frowns a moment as he rubs his damp finger over the top of another sweet, as if he’d just realized he’d said too much. “I had to wash some of your sheets and shirts when you were away, I guess.”

He mulls this over a moment, considers all the questions he can ask. “Were you jerking off that night you called?”

“So were you. You breathe different when you do it. Come on, let’s go get your stuff,” he reaches for his coat as he slides off the chair and strides towards the front of the apartment, clearly unwilling to continue the conversation in that vein.

Trip follows him, catches the door handle before he can reach for it and pushes him through the doorway. “I’m gonna trash your stuff sometime,” but he’s smirking as he says it, hovering comfortably between satisfied and aroused at Virus’ subtle unease. It’s rare to see him even the slightest bit embarrassed.

The dry cleaner is only a block away from their building, but between here and there the older man’s awkwardness dissipates and he begins chatting again, a pleasant drone at Trip’s side as he focuses on his hands and wonders exactly what they did in his bed that night last week. He grunts in reply on occasion, hearing only clips and phrases as Virus recounts how his right thumb has been hurting him again, an old injury from years ago when they’d been incapacitated in a fight gone bad, when Trip had dislocated it with one brutal kick so that he could wrest off his handcuffs and free them both. He’s unsure if, and how, this is related to Virus jerking off all over his shirts until they arrive at the dry cleaner, because as smoothly as Virus grabs the receipt, he isn’t fast enough in pocketing it before Trip sees it.

He presses his chin into Virus’ shoulder as he leans over him to stare. He only thinks about trying not to inhale too much of his scent until he sees the price and momentarily forgets. “ _Three thousand yen_? How much of my stuff did you have to _wash_ , eh?”

Virus only pushes the heel of his hand into his forehead until he steps back as he shushes him.

 

\--- 21

“How’dya know his birthday, huh?”

She stares a moment, and he wonders if he’s finally caught her in her web of lies, but then she shrugs, “Your phone. It’s the only damn thing in your calendar.”

He curses inwardly. It’s true, the only date he ever bothers to add to every new phone he cycles through, not that it’s something he’d forget to begin with, so perhaps it meant nothing after all... He still hasn’t looked at the lists of names he’d brought home.

“Ah yes. Speaking of phones…” She says then, breaking his thoughts and even as she presses the slip of paper into his hand, he knows that the end has come, because with the motion she carries with her an urgency and a finality he has never seen in anyone who was long for this world.

“What’s this?”

“My real number.” She hesitates before whispering conspiratorially, “I’ve been using a burner like you.”

“Rentals ain’t burners.” _Before the 23 rd_. Maybe it had never been about him after all, and the thought makes something twist at the base of his spine. He hasn’t felt fear since he was at the institute, but this is no ordinary fear, as it carries with it a weight and a power that is unsettling in itself. “You’re leaving again.” _Again_ , the unintended word.

“Tomorrow morning, first ferry out. Will you see me off?”

“Yea,” he replies immediately, as he can’t fathom doing anything but, somehow, as if she somehow mattered in his life. “Can I stay tonight?”

“Please. Just text your boyfriend and let him know.”

“Shut up,” but he slips his phone out as he says it, not to save the number he doesn’t dare look at but to send Virus an abrupt note, fully aware as he types it that he doesn’t want to be interrupted by a call, not tonight of all nights.

She is undeterred, only laughs and tugs at his hair gently. “Don’t upset him too much, okay? You can’t lose him.” _Lose him_ , the same words Virus’ mentor snapped at him two weeks before.

“Should be more worried about losing you, yea?”

She silences him with a kiss, and Trip rapidly forgets the momentary unease he’d felt moments ago, because if this is going to be their last night together, definitively or otherwise, he supposes it ought to be memorable. He grabs her around the hips and throws her onto the bed, on his knees over her as he kisses her in return. Her own hands are equally eager, with a fierce and quiet desperation that is of more than longing and loneliness, and Trip is momentarily reminded of their first night together, so far in the distance behind them now, as he takes her fast and hard and _again_.

She’s mostly silent the next morning, speaking in monosyllables, gesturing instead of talking, and it’s only when they are walking to the pier that she finally addresses what is happening. “You going to keep living here?”

“For a while, yea. We got our jobs and like it okay here.”

“ _We_ ,” she grins, twists his hand in hers. “You’ll take care of each other, won’t you, for good?”

_If only you knew how close you came to destroying that_ , but he never says it, instead saying something he doesn’t think about even as he speaks. “Promise.”

“Good,” she pats his arm before continuing, “You still have the number I gave you, right?”

“You jes gave it to me last night, I got it.”

“If you call, when I’m gone.” She speaks oddly, her words broken off in harsh clips as if she is unsure if she should continue.

“Why only then?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, then, about…” and she stops with a gasp that might have been the nascence of a sob as she runs a hand through her hair.

 “Okay.” There’s nothing else he can say.

“You’ll call, won’t you?”

“Yea.”

“You didn’t promise that one.” But she smiles wistfully, stands on her toes as she leans in for a kiss and a murmur in his ear that fills him with a pain he never thought he would know, because they are words he has heard a hundred times from a hundred other women, and never before had they mattered.

 

\--- 22

They’d already eaten by the time Virus loosens up enough to touch him, had knocked off three courses of Virus’ favorites foods before migrating to the bar for the rest of the evening, a long-standing birthday tradition that Trip had cooked up when he wasn’t even sixteen yet, when the idea of celebrating a random, irrelevant day for no apparent reason seemed thrilling, before they had accumulated enough wealth to eat and drink their way into a stupor whenever they pleased. “You smell good again even though it was a clean shirt earlier,” he says softly, and then he is all over him, tapered fingers grasping at his collar as Virus presses his face to his chest, his whole body tight against him while he slips off the bar stool.

He responds on instinct, grasping Virus by his upper arms and pushing him back just enough to catch his attention. “She’s gone.”

It doesn’t register for a moment, and the older man only stares at him, eyes widened in surprise, mouth partially open as he leans back and settles onto his seat again; Trip is keenly aware of the shape of his cheekbones before he smooths over his shock and something cold and hard diminishes in his eyes. “How fitting that she’s suddenly gone on my birthday.”

There is nothing he can say to this. _He thinks I dumped her as a birthday present, and I don’t dare take that thought any further or he_ knows _, he knows he knows he knows_ …. “Yea funny how that happened.”

“Did you get the name of her perfume at least? Or steal some? Oh are you upset maybe?” He says it all in one breath, as if it were all the same mundane topic, though to Virus, it likely is.

“A little,” he admits, but even as he says it he realizes that all that matters in that moment is the way Virus is looking at him.

“Mmm. She was kind of steady, huh. I thought you’d.” he stops abruptly, as though realizing he’d perhaps said too much, and he looks askance, narrowing his eyes.

“ _No_.”

The tension Trip had felt in his arms goes out of him then as he sighs softly. “I really thought you might.”

“It wasn’t like that.” _Because whoever she was, she was nothing but a stand-in for you_.

“Hm.” Virus bites his lip, chin in hand as he rests his elbow on the bar. There is a _waiting_ to his actions and his glance that has been slowly building over the last several months, a waiting that Trip can no longer deny.

He moves instinctively, not daring to let himself consider the ramifications of his actions or hope for what they might lead to. When he puts his hand on the small of Virus’ back, the older man grins, slides his smallest finger across his teeth as he tilts his head towards Trip and arches an eyebrow. And then he leans into him.

 

\--- 23

He throws the hard drive containing the lists of names into the harbor the next morning, the action drawing his attention to the fresh scratches running over his shoulder and down his back, new markings clawed over older ones drawn by other hands only the night before last, and as he stands at the edge of the pier and watches it vanish into the waves, he heaves a sigh. His next action is still more final, and for all its finality, all the more certain.

He takes care to glance at the number for too short a time to even read it fully, much less memorize it, before crumpling it up and holding his fist over the sea. He doesn’t exhale until he opens his fingers.

And when he turns on his heel and begins walking home, there is a new lightness to his step, the ice sure and solid beneath his feet.

 

 


End file.
